Political mosaics and networks: Tiwanaku expansion into the upper Desaguadero Valley, Bolivia

Abstract

Ongoing debate about the expansion of the Tiwanaku state has centred on the extent to which it exercised direct political control over a continuous territory. Positions in this debate range from those that posit a unified Tiwanaku heartland comprising much of the Lake Titicaca Basin to those that conceptualize Tiwanaku influence as more circumscribed, and perhaps limited to the city itself. We engage this debate by assessing evidence for Tiwanaku expansion into the upper Desaguadero Valley, a region often argued to have been within the core area of Tiwanaku control. We present new evidence from four sites: Khonkho Wankane, Iruhito, Cerro Chijcha and Nazacara. These data suggest that Tiwanaku political influence was selective and focused on developing relationships with riverine communities in order to gain access to caravan circuits. Rather than a core area of continuous control, these processes created a shifting political mosaic rooted in fluid politico-religious webs.

Temporal Inflection Points in Decorated Pottery: A Bayesian Refinement of the Late Formative Chronology in the Southern Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia

“…West of Khonkho Wankane, Iruhito stretches along the bank of the Desaguadero River (Pérez Arias 2013; Smith and Janusek 2014; Smith et al 2017). The only Late Formative decorated ceramic sherds at the site were two to three Kalasasaya red-rimmed sherds from a burial context (415.5).…”

Compositional data supports decentralized model of production and circulation of artifacts in the pre-Columbian south-central Andes

“…The south-central Andean region of South America, with its long-term record of socio-material interactions across vast areas (6,7), has provided a fertile ground for scholarly debates on the role of such practices in the emergence of socio-political hierarchies and statehood (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15). We examine some of these practices in northwest Argentina (NWA), part of the south-central Andes, through a multianalytical approach incorporating petrography, compositional, and archaeological analysis of pottery and obsidian artifacts, previously studied separately.…”

Plants in Transit Communities: Circulating Tubers and Maize in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia

“…Ethnohistoric (Murra 1968) and ethnographic (Nielsen 2001; Tripcevich 2016) research into camelid caravans shows the array of social and economic processes underlying such movements. The circulation of goods played a particularly important role in the development of Middle Horizon polities, where a flourishing of interregional connections contributed to new social, political, and economic arrangements (Browman 1980, 1981; Roddick 2015; Sharratt et al 2015; Smith 2016; Smith and Janusek 2014). Although scholars continue to debate what kind of economic systems structured exchange in the Titicaca region and in the Andes as a whole (Stanish and Coben 2013), it is clear that, as Tiwanaku emerged, certain portable goods were essential in new regimes of value.…”

“…In the Tiwanaku “heartland,” for example, Stanish and colleagues (2010) demonstrate that although Tiwanaku benefited from long-distance relationships by the fifth century, urban elites certainly did not control broad economic landscapes. Even though elites may have briefly connected parts of the social landscape, these networks likely had much longer histories reaching back into the Formative period and do not appear to have been substantially disrupted in the Middle Horizon (Smith and Janusek 2014).…”

“…He suggests that specific settlements became hubs for trading because of their position within caravan circuits. Scholars have begun to identify such communities for the Formative period (Levine et al 2013; Smith and Janusek 2014; Stanish et al 2010) and are tracing their relationships with other caravan “nodes” in the southern Altiplano and Atacama Desert (Berenguer 2004; Capriles 2011; Nielsen 2006; Plourde 2006; Stanish 2003).…”